In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product is a thriller film. More specifically it’s a Psychological Thriller. The main idea of a Psychological Thriller is to basically play with the viewers mind. For example with the film ‘Inception’, the whole film is based around dreams and then dreams within dreams and the film has a lot of playing with the mind, even at the end of the film you’re not entirely sure if what you just saw was actually real or a dream. This is what our main idea was in our product, to play with the mind. So we tried to do the same thing with our film. Being that we could only have a maximum of 3 minutes, we really tried to get that idea straight into our film. In this case, the Dark Figure. Our character get’s up and looks out the window for the first time and sees no figure. But the second time, there is. Already we have things going through the viewers mind. Why was the figure there? But also, that character took pills earlier so does that have a reason to why the figure was there? But this also brings on even more questions, why does him taking the pills mean that there is dark figure? Were they illegal drugs or is he hallucinating? But then, there is also the main character drawing pictures of dark figures. The viewer asks him/herself, why? All these questions are in your head while watching this clip and that is exactly what we aimed to do. Play with the mind. I believe we did this very well in our media clip considering it is less than 3 minutes.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our product represents the social group of teenagers. This would probably be the more rebellious teenagers who listen to rock music and heavy metal and do minor crimes such as underage drinking and smoking. We added lots of motives into our film which associate with representation of teenagers, such as the Xbox 360 Games on the shelf, the Xbox Controllers, the bottle of alcohol etc. These types of motives show the representation of teenagers. I suppose this represents teenagers in a negative way as it makes teenagers come across as lazy and rebellious which is also a stereotype towards the average school boy teenager.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
The type of media institution that would distribute our media product would be Media shops such as HMV, Comet etc. These shops would distribute them in DVD format and Blu Ray format. Another place that would distribute our product would be the internet. This would be places such as Amazon and would also be in DVD and Blu Ray format. This would obviously only happen if we got publishing rights. Also, we would need good reception from critics and advertising would be key if we want to get any decent sales. This would also be the case if we ever wanted our film to be shown in the cinemas also.
Websites could also distribute our product, with websites such as YouTube, Mega Video etc. But this would be in digital video format. This would also be the case if we wanted to distribute our product on iTunes. Again, we would need publishing rights but not necessarily good reception because as long as it’s published, these sorts of online stores would probably distribute the film. Advertising however would again be needed if we wanted any decent sales.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our target audience was teenagers between ages 15 – 18. This would be because our type of film follows the same rules and regulations of a 15 rated film. Certain aspect of our film that makes it a 15 is things such as: drug taking, swearing, violence, also horror is an aspect. Because of this the BBFC probably would rate this film as 15 so that is why we didn’t aim for anyone below the age of 15 because it is illegal for anyone under that age to watch a 15 rated film anyway. We believe that the limit age would be 18 because it’s based around someone the age of 15 – 18 so this obviously would be the suited age group. Though this is the target audience, I still believe that anyone between the ages of 15 to about 30 would enjoy the film, but still 15 – 18 is our main target audience because they are the audience that we aim to please.
How did you attract/address your target audience?
To attract/ address our audience we used a teenager as our main character so that the teenagers can relate to the film. We also made the actor have various teenage related motives such as a band poster on the wall and also the costume consisted of a band t shirt. Also, our setting was a bedroom which is generally a teenager’s secluded personal area. In the shots where the main character gets up to look the window, you can see bottle of alcohol on the shelf. This relates to our age group of 15 – 18 year olds as this is the age group where they are beginning to do certain rebellious things such as underage drinking, so by adding in the bottle of alcohol we related to this rebellious age group of underage drinking.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Through the filming of our main product, we used Final Cut Express to do all of our editing. Through this process I learnt various techniques to use in Final Cut Express such as different transition types and putting text on the shots for credits. I learnt also to edit sound and also adjust certain settings such as brightness. Adjusting brightness was quite an important setting we needed as the shot where we filmed out the window to show the lamppost and also the shot with the lamppost and the Dark Figure, we had to turn it up reasonably high so you could see what was going on in the shot. Another technique I learnt through Final Cut Express was to edit sound as the original soundtrack I composed and recorded had the timings all in the wrong places, such as when the actor gets up to look out the window to see the Dark Figure and also when he falls over. So I learnt to cut down the soundtrack with the razor tool.
I learnt how to use a proper video camera in the process of filming. Before I’ve only ever used video cameras on digital cameras and mobile phones but now I can use the proper video camera. One of thing I learnt to use on the camera properly was to use the zoom. I learnt that you can zoom at different speeds depending on how much pressure you use on the zoom switch. Before on digital cameras and mobile phones, it’s just a button you press and the zoom goes at its own pace, which limits the shots to simple zoom rather than controlled zoom which can give a better effect. I also learnt to use the tripod properly, learning that I can adjust height and tilt the camera to give better camera shots and movement. This meant that I could have smooth movements without the camera jolting or shaking.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at the preliminary task I have learnt to be very careful when it comes to continuity errors. When we first filmed our preliminary tasks, there was a problem with the blind changing positions in the background. With our final filming of the preliminary task, we had a problem with which hand we used to pass the money across the table and we had to add another shot to fix the problem so we didn't have to film that shot again. Through these errors that we made with the preliminary task, we learnt to be extra careful with each shot leaving out any mistakes we might make. The main continuity error we worried about in our main task was the position of the props on the desk. We had to make sure that when our actor sharpened the pencil and put down the sharpener, we had to make sure that in the shots afterwards, the sharpener had to stay in the same position it was put down in. Same with the pills and the glass of water after the shot when he takes the pills, we had to make sure they were in the same position afterwards.
Another thing we learnt from our preliminary task was to extra careful when it comes to the 180 degree rule, as it was one of the first rules we knew we had broken when we first filmed our preliminary. It actually became one of the rules that we kept on talking about when planning the shots. To overcome this problem, we had a plan of the room in our heads so that when we did the planning of the shots, we could imagine where the 180 degree limit was.
The final thing we learnt about during the filming of the preliminary task was the lighting. When we first filmed, we had no lights on and a tiny phone torch to use as light. This turned out to be a bad idea as it was too dark to really see anything going on in the shot. So with our second filming of the preliminary task we had the lights on in the room. This was much better and you could see everything that went on. We didn't get the effect of a dark mysterious room but at least we could see the shots. We learnt from this that we had to get the lighting done well in order to see what went on in the shots. We also used my reading lamp for extra light so that there was less shadows on the actors face but also we could create shadows for effect.
Conclusion
Overall I am very proud of our media project. I enjoyed doing the project and I enjoy watching the project back. If I was to do it again, I would definitely try and be in a larger group. Working in a pair was ok but it did leave simple problems like having to discuss ideas with only one other person so Dan and I could only ever make decisions between ourselves rather than discussing ideas with a group of people. If I was to go back and film it again, I would try to do better job with the sound, as every now and again you can hear certain thing such as creaking and clicking which is not actually anything to do with the film. With regard to the blog, I would make sure that I planned the blog posts in more advance and also, put them in a more logical order as the posts are mixed up because we just did the blog posts and posted them rather than organising them.


















